


your hair was long when we first met

by quidhitch



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:09:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8653768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quidhitch/pseuds/quidhitch
Summary: i.The thing is - he keeps trying to leave.He tries to slip out of the wedding without her noticing. He says goodbye to Luke and Lorelai, kisses his mom’s cheek, wraps up some of the best cake for the road, and is halfway through his shitty car door when he feels an unmistakably small hand on his shoulder.“I wasn’t sneaking out,” he says, and he should’ve gotten over this, this embarrassment and shyness and palm-sweating. These are distinctly teenage things.“Could’ve fooled me,” she quips back, but there’s really no venom in it. She looks nice, in a blue dress and gently curled hair. She always looks nice.“You’ve got my number.”“I put the snake emoji next to your contact.”“You’ve got my address.”“It is in fact saved with your number.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> i mean......how could i not! catch me on tumblr @quidhitch.

i.

The thing is - he keeps trying to leave.

He tries to slip out of the wedding without her noticing. He says goodbye to Luke and Lorelai, kisses his mom’s cheek, wraps up some of the best cake for the road, and is halfway through his shitty car door when he feels an unmistakably small hand on his shoulder.

“I wasn’t sneaking out,” he says, and he should’ve gotten over this, this embarrassment and shyness and palm-sweating. These are distinctly teenage things.

“Could’ve fooled me,” she quips back, but there’s really no venom in it. She looks nice, in a blue dress and gently curled hair. She always looks nice.

“You’ve got my number.”

“I put the snake emoji next to your contact.”

“You’ve got my address.”

“It is in fact saved with your number.”

“Your organizer is thirty different colors. You’d never lose my contact.” he asks, that combination of mirth and nostalgia hitting him square in the chest yet again. Rory makes him melodramatic in an annoyingly consistent way.

“It’s still sneaking out if you don’t say goodbye, Dodger,” she reminds, knocking the toe of her heel against the bottom of his car.

He heaves a sigh, stands up, and allows himself to be pulled into a hug. He’s not great with this sort of thing, he always feels just a little bit guilty leaving her, but… well. It is what it is, whatever the hell that means.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she says, pulling back and smushing his face with soft hands. She spent half the night teasing him about his hair and the other half smiling secretly at her lap. There was a time when maybe it would have bothered him, that there was something he didn’t know about her, something someone else got to know first, but now… now he’s just glad she’s alright.

“Not my territory anymore, Gilmore,” he says wryly, and he kisses her cheek because even though she’s a strong and powerful and completely grown woman, it still makes her blush a little like she’s seventeen.

She lets him duck all the way into the car this time, and even drive away. That guilt is there, easing into his chest, telling him he should stay even though he has a whole life in Philly just waiting for him, but at a red light 50 miles out of Stars Hollow his phone goes off. Someone has changed the ringtone to a Clash song. Guns of Brixton.

He picks it up from the passenger’s seat, clicks on the screen, and smiles.

ii.

The thing is - she’s not keen on letting him leave.

She knows, she knows, that if she calls on a Friday night and asks him to come down to the Hollow for the weekend, despite whatever flimsy plans he’s made and despite whoever he’s made them with, he’ll come. She knows this is especially true if she tells him she has new chapters for him, which is never true, she only has new chapters at three AM on Wednesday mornings, he’s never been presented with a draft at a reasonable hour. Writers.

“This is great,” he says, rubbing his eyes under his glasses and sliding twelve thousand words on The Life And Death Brigade across the table to her.

“You always say that,” she smiles, plopping down next to him with two giant mugs of coffee. He’s fairly certain they’re both for her. It’s comforting to think that she is still the kind of person who drinks two mugs of coffee at 3 AM.

“It’s always great,” he insists. And he means it. He put notes in the margins for her like he always has, but it doesn’t make it any less great.

“I’ve kind of been holding out on you,” she tells him quietly, tucking her legs underneath her. She extends the cup of coffee towards him, which either means she’s going to tear his heart out through his chest or ask him for another extension.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“…well. Spit it out, Gilmore.”

“The chapters about us are done, in theory. I never sent them to you because… I’ve said everything I have to say but they still feel…” she trails off, pulling her legs closer to her stomach.

“Unfinished,” he finishes. Ha.

“Unfinished,” she agrees. There’s a beat of silence before she continues, this time with her hand on his knee. “I’m working on it, though.”

“Yeah, well.” He kind of wants to say work faster or I don’t think you’ll ever be mine in the way I’m yours but he also kind of really wants some ice cream. And ice cream always wins out in the end, especially if it’s in cones.

iii.

“This is a Luke job.”

“Luke is in Nantucket. Come on. We can do this.”

“We cannot do this. I can screw a new lightbulb into my reading lamp, Rory, and that’s about it.”

“Reading lamp,” she snorts, “what are you, fifty?”

“Almost.”

“Oh, don’t be morbid.”

“Ugh, I think I pulled something in my back,” he says, even though he definitely has not pulled something in his back. The pieces of the put-together expensive Ikea crib Logan sent them are scattered on her living room floor, and he’s starting to think that fourth beer was a subpar idea. The pieces appear to be multiplying. It’s all a little Lifetime movie gone wrong.

“My former statement rescinded, if you’re having back problems the time to be morbid is now,” Rory laughs, leaning back against her couch and reading the instruction manual yet again.

“Remind me again why Logan sent a Swedish crib? Was America out?”

She makes a noise in the back of her throat, one hand clasped around the indecipherable pamphlet, another painstakingly typing characters into google translate. “you remember the chapter about the Birkin. He’s always been a little… well. A lot.”

It’s funny, that he knows her life in chapters now.

“I don’t think I can get up,” he confesses. This is mostly true.

“It’s fine,” Rory sighs, dropping the pamphlet onto the scattered pieces. She is so, so pregnant and she’s eaten no less than five chocolate covered pickles today. What a woman. “You were never going to sleep in the bed anyways, Mr. Mariano. I’ll get the sleeping bag.”

“I’m good, actually. Aren’t pregnant people not supposed to move around a lot?”

“Where was this benevolent spirit when I was out of chocolate covered pickles earlier?”

“It comes and goes.”

He doesn’t have to open his eyes to know she’s rolled hers, that she’s looking at him with a fond expression and a hand on her cocked hip. It’s a kind of synchronization that he thought he’d never get back, that he just realizes he’s had for a while now. Luke and Lorelai will probably be less obnoxious now. Or not.

“Hey, what do you think our prom song would’ve been?” she calls from the bedroom. She says things like this sometimes, things that terrify and excite him as much as a 34 year old can be terrified and excited.

“Judging by the year, probably something Britney,” he laughs, brushing the hair from his forehead. He thought, back when he was a horrible, pretentious teenager, that it might be XTC.

The fact that she doesn’t immediately object to this is a warning sign.

“Rory?” he asks, more than concerned. No response. He’s up in seconds, jogging to the master bedroom and freezing in the doorway. She is standing in the middle of a wet spot on her very expensive carpet, and she looks more terrified than he’s ever seen her.

“Fuck,” he says, but that’s probably not the right thing to say in this moment, “shit,” that isn’t either, “where’s the baby bag?” There it is.

“What the hell is a baby bag?” she all but wails, looking at the carpet with disproportionate disappointment considering she’s in labor.

“You know! The baby bag where you keep the clothes and shit!”

“We had another week,” she says, “everything’s in Stars Hollow! Isn’t your back supposed to be injured?”

“No. I’ll drive you,” he says, more to organize his own thoughts than hers, “there’s a hospital a couple blocks down. Come on, come on. Let’s go.”

He crosses the room and holds her hand down the stairs and through the whole drive there. He doesn’t let go in the delivery room, even when they get Logan on Skype and Paris shoots him the most aggressive death glare. They’re all yelling at her - Logan’s calling her Ace, Paris’ voice reaching a decibel only dogs can hear, the nurses yelling commands every twenty seconds - but he’s quiet, holding her hand and muttering ‘jesus christ’ every few seconds.

“Please don’t throw up,” she instructs, a half groan half yell as they come up on the last round of pushing.

“I’ll do my best,” he promises, his fingers going completely white where they’re clutched between hers.

iv.

He’s still in the hospital hours later when everyone else is gone. Luke and Lorelai are on their way, and he doesn’t want to leave her alone with Skype Logan who’s got work in a couple hours anyways.

“That was really awful,” she says into her pillow. They’re still holding hands, but it’s loose, like his fingers might slip through hers at any moment.

“People really oversold the whole labor thing, huh?” he hears Skype Logan laugh through her phone’s speakers, tired and rough. He smiles, even though he hates that they’re a horrible modern family.

“Thank you for staying.”

“Yeah, well,” he sighs, settling back against the chair and closing his eyes. “I didn’t want to leave.”

v.

He kind of thought he’d always be the problem boyfriend in Rory Gilmore’s life, Lorelai certainly had money on it, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that Logan Huntzberger has beat him out yet again.

When she shows up at his apartment door at eleven at night with puffy eyes and a tub of Cherry Garcia, he knows he should turn her away. He knows because he watched Luke do this to himself for years, and even though he ended up with the girl in the end, that’s no guarantee the world has the same conclusion in store for Jess. The world hates Jess.

“We just can’t get it together,” she tells him in a watery voice, around a brain-freezing mouthful of Cherry Garcia, “we try so hard. We just.. we make bad choices. We can’t wait, we can’t do things right.”

Jess doesn’t really know what to say to stuff like this, so he just nods and eats more ice cream.

“I’m sorry,” she says, tucking her head against his shoulder. “I shouldn’t be coming to you with this. It’s not fair.”

They’ve been burning for so long, so slowly and quietly, that he sometimes stops to wonder if she even remembers he loves her.

“It’s fine,” he says, smoothing her hair. He has not let his life come to a standstill in the way he would have wanted to in his twenties. He has friends, he meets women, he puts out books in his smelly publishing house. But she’s always there, her baby and baggage perpetually in tow. “How long have you got the sitter for?”

She sniffs. “Another hour.”

“Alright. Let’s finish the ice cream. I can drive you home.”

“I can Über.”

“Rory,” he says, ducking his head to look at her. She looks like she might kiss him - not for the first time in so many years - but he doesn’t want it to be now. So he looks away. “I can drive you home.”

She wipes her nose using the sleeve of his best jacket. “Okay.”

vi.

Emma Gilmore’s second birthday party is quite the affair. It’s held in Rory’s brownstone uptown, and all of the well-dressed kids from her fancy daycare and ballet class (Jess seriously doesn’t understand the logistics of toddlers and ballet, but he leaves Rory to it) have shown up.

He feels a little out of place, in an old sweater and jeans. He’s busying himself with dumping the Spinach and Artichoke dip into a large pink bowl.

“Hello, heathen,” Lorelai Gilmore has taken to pinching his arm whenever she sees him. It’s a little more aggressive than absolutely necessary.

“Hello, auntie,” he counters, smirking into his spinach and artichoke dip.

She lets out a half-hearted tut and straight up eats a spoonful of dip out of the bowl. He tries very hard not to look on in horror. Both women are downright repulsive.

“Are you gonna make it a habit?” she asks, nearly dipping the same spoon back in the bowl. He swats her away. “Of coming to these things?”

“Emma’s second birthday? Far as I know, she’s only having one.”

“Don’t be difficult.”

“Then what would we talk about?”

They’re quiet for a moment. He has sat on her living room couch too many times for this sort of thing to be hostile anymore, even if she keeps eating his dip and pinching his arms.

“I didn’t see it coming,” she sighs, a little quieter. This is the ‘I don’t want Rory to hear us’ voice. She and Luke both have one.

He waits a minute. It is clear she isn’t going to continue without prompting. The Gilmores are at the height of their dramatics during family outings. “What?”

“You,” it sounds so reluctant Jess is surprised the words didn’t get lodged in her throat, “you being… the best. For her.”

He steadfastly avoid eye contact, “That’s over, Lorelai.”

Lorelai looks like she wants to argue, but Jess is scooping dip into the bowl a little more aggressively now, and she seems to think the better of it. She continues to look at him with sad mom eyes, though, and while he may be able to coexist peacefully with the woman, he still doesn’t want her understanding anymore than she wants his.

“Thank you. For being here today.”

“She would’ve managed without me,” Jess assures. There’s no bitterness in it. He knows that now. She could’ve managed without any of them, if she really wanted.

“Maybe,” Lorelai tells him, swiping the dip from his hands. She makes her way out of the kitchen, calling out behind her as she goes, “but the important thing is she didn’t want to.”

vii.

There is no big moment.

They had their big moment, over a decade ago in the grassy fields behind the inn, she held him around the waist and he put his hands on either side of her face, and they were recklessly, terribly in love.

As much as he hates so much of what came after, they do not need another moment. There will always be something perfect about that first one.

“Am I picking Em up from Preschool today?” he asks. He’s pulling jeans on in the middle of the kitchen, tripping over the pant legs as he wracks his brain for where she might’ve hidden his car keys. That’s a bit now, a stupid excuse he has for not heading home when it gets a little late.

“No, she’s sleeping at Paris’ tonight,” Rory calls from the bedroom. She is miraculously fully dressed, but she only has one earring on. Jess decides he is not going to tell her.

“Are you making it to the bar opening then?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. Coffee?”

“Can’t hurt.”

“Especially coming from a new Italian espresso machine.”

“Yeah, that fancy foreign coffee is going to go great with - what are we having for breakfast? Pop Tarts?”

Rory grins over the lip of her mug, “Pop Tarts are for paying guests only, Mariano.”

Jess snorts, his hand subconsciously curling around the back of Emma’s head when she bolts from the bathroom to the kitchen, now firmly wrapped around his leg.

“Good morning,” he tells her, rumpling her hair.

“Hi Tree,” she says solemnly back. They’re not entirely sure why she calls him that, but she is a weird little kid, and ‘Tree’ is bounds better than ‘daddy’, so he’ll take the small miracles when he can get them.

“Come on, squish,” Rory says, setting down her coffee and reaching down to detach Emma from his leg. Jess moves to pour the contents of her mug into a to-go cup.

“Hey,” he says, still turned around, his heart suddenly a thousand miles a minute in his chest, “do you want to ditch the opening early and grab dinner?”

“You can’t ditch the opening, it’s your opening.”

“There’s three other openers. We have spares.”

“But you’re the most charming.”

“Getting less and less funny by the day, Gilmore,” Jess smiles, turning around and handing her the cup. He wants her to get it without him having to say, but she won’t. He’s been so quiet for so long.

“Sure,” she says, taking the coffee from him with a grateful smile. Emma tucks her head in Rory’s neck, and they both get distracted for a minute on how cute she is. Jess is not a kid person, but if he was… she would be the one. “You wanna do Pizzaroma?”

“Aversano’s might be a little more appropriate.”

She smiles, half rolling her eyes, “why? You’re not asking me on a daaate are you?”

He doesn’t say anything. Her eyes widen.

“You’re asking me on a date?” she asks, incredulous. Emma does not untuck her head from Rory’s neck, and Jess is grateful. He couldn’t handle two judgmental Gilmore stares in the span of one minute.

“Is that no good?”

“No, I mean,” she looks at her watch and back at him, a hopelessly happy sort of expression in her eyes. “I just want to kiss you now, but we’re late for Preschool.”

“You could be a little late for Preschool,” Jess deadpans, raising an eyebrow, “I’m pretty sure all they do in even fancy Italian Preschools is eat play dough and perform Tamborine covers of Ave Maria.”

Rory looks at him for a moment, the tilt of her brow a little too similar to her mother’s to be comfortable, before gently setting Emma down and instructing her to go potty before they hit the road. If someone asked Jess Mariano what words would begin the relationship he wants to hold onto for the rest of his life, he would have guessed something Neruda, not ‘time to go potty’.

But actually, the last thing she says before she jumps into his arms - literally jumps, he catches her around the legs just barely in time to keep them from both clattering to the floor - is ‘god, you’re slow on the uptake’.

And that’s okay, because he is, he is, he totally is, but it doesn’t even matter if it means that at the end of all of it, there is Rory Gilmore pressing her perfect mouth against his, her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, lips still moving at the patented Gilmore pace.

viii.

They sit across from each other at dinner later that night, forgetting to look through the menu or answer work calls or do anything but mock each other mercilessly. The lighting in Aversano’s is too dim for Jess to read the menu without glasses, and Rory keeps making fun of him for being an old man. They order dessert and only dessert because Jess is still a bad boy.

“Hi,” she says halfway through the night, a dopey smile on her face as she rests her chin in her hand.

“Hi,” he says back, ankle hooking around hers under the table.

And, yeah, maybe they’ve come full circle, but Jess doesn’t feel pathetic or piney. In fact, he doesn’t feel like he would have done it any other goddamn way.


End file.
